


days of a gun

by beardsley



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-16
Updated: 2012-10-16
Packaged: 2017-11-16 11:08:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/538782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beardsley/pseuds/beardsley
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Here's the thing: Rebecca Barnes died, and the Winter Soldier is a whole new person. The Winter Soldier is active for more years than Bucky has been alive, and the only war the Winter Soldier ever fought was the one for his country.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	days of a gun

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Дни огня](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2505533) by [Skata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skata/pseuds/Skata)



> follows [this](http://quigonejinn.tumblr.com/post/31383822387/hey-hey-girl-bucky-before-the-war-girl-bucky) post by quigonejinn, and won't make much sense without it. title from the aptly-titled _Stevie's (Days of a Gun)_ by Martina Topley-Bird.
> 
>  **warnings** : violence, torture, past rape, body dysmorphia. internalised homophobia, misogyny, ableism (there is a bit where a character treats their disability as karmic punishment, I really grossed myself out writing that, ugh I'm so sorry), also slut-shaming and victim blaming.
> 
> yeah. it's that kind of story.

They never wanted her in the Commandos. They were afraid her experiences from the factory camp could drive her to hysteria. They were afraid she would slow the unit down, just a girl with a big gun. How unseemly.

Rebecca Barnes knows war: she's fought one from the first time she stole a piece of stale bread and hid it under her skirt, from the first time she stood up for an asthmatic weakling getting the piss beaten out of him in a back alley, from the first time she fucked a boy and told him she'd slit his throat if he called her a whore (because she couldn't let the asthmatic weakling find out what kind of girl she was; she had his respect and admiration and awe, and he couldn't ever know who she really was).

There is never anyone to meet her in the middle, and still she dies reaching out.

~

The recovery room is nothing more than a cell. They don't even bother to put anything over the raw concrete floor; walking on it barefoot sends shivers up Bucky's legs. Instead of bars, the room has a single door secured with fingerprint, retinal and voice command locks. Bucky would think it's kind of overkill, but knows it's anything but. The force of Bucky's left arm measures up to about twenty kilonewtons — technically more, but more pull could damage all the squishy bits that keep the arm attached to the shoulder.

On the wall next to the door there's a mirror. It can be one-way or two-way, and after a few days Bucky stops caring that there is probably a gaggle of scientists and agents watching what goes on inside, day in, day out.

There's a bed and a small bathroom and no windows. It's small and cramped and suffocating, and it reminds Bucky of the cryostasis chamber, of drowning in ice. Bucky's comfort isn't high on SHIELD's list of priorities; it ranks pretty far below interrogation and re-conditioning, below casual beatings because _this fucker killed Selvig and Foster, he shot Pepper Potts, don't you know, he's the reason agent Romanoff —_ , below dissecting Bucky's arm and pulling the artificial nerve endings to see how much it hurts.

~

Here's the thing: Rebecca Barnes died, and the Winter Soldier is a whole new person. The Winter Soldier is active for more years than Bucky has been alive, and the only war the Winter Soldier ever fought was the one for his country. Rebecca Barnes, if you gave her a choice, wouldn't choose to be a man; she's always been cocky, and her own war was the one she was ready to fight till her dying breath. She was a proud and contrary bitch and she danced with whoever she liked. If you gave her a choice, she'd pick her war.

No one gave her a choice.

But the thing is also that Bucky is good at surviving miserable odds, and after all these years the Winter Soldier's body feels not right, because Bucky is still a stranger in it, but it's bearable. (It feels stronger and better and tougher, and Bucky will take those odds.) She thinks of herself as a man, because otherwise she'll go fucking nuts. In her dreams, though, and she always dreams in black and white, she's back to how she should be. Not skirts and curled hair and cheap lipstick, no, but everything else.

When they take away your choice, you take what you can. Bucky chooses anger.

~

He's not ready for it when the mirror turns from opaque to transparent, but they never give him advance warning. He leans against the wall to have the entire hallway in his line of vision, but nothing could prepare him for Natasha. He'd fought her because she had what the Winter Soldier never could, because she got free and saved herself and was more than a tool to be used. Because his orders didn't specify how to sabotage the Avengers Initiative, but something in him hated Natasha with the same force he'd loved her, once.

She looks small in a wheelchair, one that doesn't have handles, and it gives Bucky no satisfaction. He doesn't pity her; he doesn't think he still has the capacity to feel pity. He rests his head against the cold bulletproof glass.

'Come to watch the animal in its cage?' His voice is scratchy with misuse.

Natasha levels him with an unimpressed look. 'Yes.'

She doesn't say anything else, just keeps her eyes trained on Bucky's face. Bucky doesn't know what she's seeing and what she's searching for. Guilt, maybe, or shame, and Bucky's got that in spades, but he ain't fond of sharing. That's Steve. But there's no way to tell what she came for, if it was for herself or for Bucky — maybe she just needed to see that the man who crippled her isn't exactly living the high life, either. It's a shame he aimed for her thighs; he remembers she could do amazing things with her legs in a fight.

'So now you know who I was,' Bucky says, trying on a humourless smile when the silence gets too thick. 'Does that bother you? Think that makes you a dyke?'

Natasha lifts her chin. 'I don't know, does it make _you_ a dyke?'

Bucky snorts. 'Ouch.'

Wheeling back a little so she doesn't have to tilt her head up so much, Natasha lets her mouth twist in a smirk that looks more like a grimace. 'I know what you're trying to do,' she says. 'You antagonise everybody who comes near you. You think if you push far enough, they'll kill you. Well, they won't. Nick Fury is actually thrilled to have you here; he hopes that with time and deprogramming — or I suppose _re_ programming — he'll be running you within a year's time. Just like our past employers. You're still the perfect soldier, after all.' Her eyes narrow. 'But you'll never get out of the cage, Barnes. You're the rabid dog they'll set on people but won't ever let inside the house.'

'You could put me down,' says Bucky. 'After what I did to you.'

'I could.' Natasha cocks her head to one side. 'I could slip a gun inside your cell, or a length of fabric strong enough to support your weight, or poison. Maybe the same kind you used on me. But I won't. Want to know why?'

Bucky shrugs, but his jaw is tight. 'Thrill me.'

'Two reasons, really. One, I'm still not sure this —' she gestures vaguely at her legs, vulnerable and unmoving '— isn't the universe's way of telling me I'm not yet done paying for the things _I_ did. But mostly, I can't deny I would much rather have you stuck in this place forever. Death is easy. It's a mercy.' She waits for Bucky to nod in acknowledgement; they both know, intimately, exactly what a mercy it is to kill, sometimes. 'I probably shouldn't be one to judge,' Natasha says, looking away, 'but still, I don't think you deserve to die.'

She doesn't wait for Bucky to reply, just turns the wheelchair around and leaves. Bucky wonders, idly, how much time she's spending every day to retrain her body, to accommodate these new circumstances. She's gonna have to put some work into making her hands and arms her primary weapons, invest in some new guns. And she won't ever lift herself on her tiptoes, like she weighs nothing, arms spread wide and oh, she won't ever dance again.

Bucky remembers, because he remembers everything: a UN official, the first showing of _Swan Lake_ of that year at the Bolshoi, and Natasha as Odette, compelling the entire audience with her grace and aching and vulnerability, a perfect act. But the Winter Soldier knew, even then, even though he had no idea what the ballet was about, that Natasha's real talent came out when she was dressed in black, and she didn't have to fake the anger and ruthlessness she let her face show.

Bucky remembers sitting behind the UN official, a knife taped to his forearm and another two crossed at his lower back, garrote wire hidden in his watch. He remembers walking three steps behind him, following him to the bathroom, locking the door. The man pissed himself when he saw the Winter Soldier; he begged. But he begged in French, and the Winter Soldier didn't feel like small talk, so he just kicked the legs out from under him and when the man managed to get up on his knees, the Winter Soldier looped the wire twice around his neck and pulled.

What he doesn't remember is what year it was, or how long he was kept under afterwards.

When the window turns opaque again, Bucky slides down to the ground and closes his eyes and tries to remember what mercy felt like. That night he dreams of killing a bourgeois family in St Petersburg with a tommy gun, wearing his — her old uniform.

~

'You're not the person who did those things, Bucky.'

'Mm.'

Steve looks at him the way he looked at soldiers bleeding out in the trenches, the way he looked at Soviet POWs starving to death, the way he looked at the bodies of executed SS officers. He looks at Bucky like he's a war crime. Bucky wonders who he sees, and who he wants to see, and if he's deluding himself about how much of Bucky there's left in this body.

Bucky wonders all that, but the sedatives the white coats have him on make everything frayed around the edges. The light makes his head heavy, the noise makes him want to throw up. He can feel every new bruise blooming across his ribs and back and face; there are orders to treat the Winter Soldier humanely, but contrary to popular belief Nick Fury doesn't have eyes everywhere and sometimes he's fine with looking the other way. Bucky knows Steve sees the black eye, the flecks of dried blood on Bucky's upper lip; he knows, because he can see the pain in Steve's eyes as if he was the one who got beat up. But Steve doesn't say anything, because maybe he thinks Bucky deserves it, too.

'After I got myself killed,' says Bucky, fighting not to slur his words, leaning against the two-way mirror heavily, 'did they say they never shoulda let a gal in the unit?'

Steve hangs his head, colour rising in his cheeks. It makes Bucky choke out a laugh, because that's hilarious, that is. Phillips must've been so full of shit; he'd been right all along, wasn't he? Just a girl with a big gun, and she got dead like everybody knew she would.

'Thought so.' Bucky smiles, and knows it isn't pretty, but he's too out of it to care. 'Did you defend my honour, Steve?'

Steve pulls a face. 'You never needed me to defend your honour.'

'I fucked more guys than you had words with women who weren't me,' Bucky snaps. 'I got no honour.'

What she doesn't say is: even if she had any honour, HYDRA guards in the factory camp fucked it right outta her. The only woman in the whole place, and look at her, drugged out of her mind half the time. Too easy. Bucky doesn't even remember it, except in flashes, the smell of sweat and the fingerprint bruises on her hips, and Jones of all people trying to protect her before they dragged her away. Good times all around.

Steve doesn't need to know that. Maybe he suspected, he isn't as sheltered as they make him out to be, but if it ever seemed strange to him that Bucky wouldn't let anyone touch her afterwards, that she didn't go anywhere without at least two trench knives hidden somewhere on her body, well, he probably would rather not hear that his best friend was _that_ kind of girl.

'Bucky,' Steve says now, pleading; once, it was Bucky's job to protect him, ass-backwards as that seemed.

It's not her job any more. It's not his, either.

~

Next time Steve comes to visit — and he comes every other day, or at least it feels that way; Bucky doesn't have any way of telling the time — it's him who's pressed against the two-way mirror, tall and big. After the last round of reprogramming and interrogation, Bucky doesn't have the strength to stand up, so he sits with his legs crossed on the floor. It wouldn't be so bad, but he gave the guards cheek. He's pretty sure his right shoulder is dislocated, but pain is good. Pain keeps you sharp.

'Why are you doing this?' Steve asks, eyes fixed on the blood dripping slowly from Bucky's nose. He curls his hand, pressed to the mirror, into a fist. Bucky doesn't know if Steve is angry at him or at something else, maybe at this whole hopeless situation. Maybe at Fury, or Department X. It's a little funny, and a lot sad, how little control Bucky has over what happens to him.

He raises his head, ignoring the creak in his neck. 'Why are you?'

'Because I love you,' says Steve. His hunched shoulders, the dark circles under his eyes, make him look small and scared.

Bucky drops his head back down, closes his eyes. 'I know.' A small, crooked smile tugs at his lips. 'I knew even then. You thought you were so sneaky, but I saw how you looked at me. You never looked at anyone else like that, until Peggy. I wanted to wring her fucking neck,' Bucky adds. With a sigh, he lies down. The concrete floor is cold and comforting under his back, and it helps that he can't see Steve's face. 'So fucking posh and classy, you know, you were like a puppy around her.'

'I was, wasn't I,' Steve says, sounding a little dismayed.

The smile seeps out of Bucky's expression. 'Except you still look at me like that.'

'What? No, I —' Steve cuts himself off with an annoyed huff. It's nice, kinda, that he doesn't try to lie.

'You're as much of a freak as me,' Bucky says, and throws an arm over his eyes. He doesn't even like pushing Steve, but he can't help it. Maybe Natasha was right. Maybe he just wants someone to put him out of his misery.

'That doesn't make you a freak,' Steve says quietly, and Bucky can imagine the way he blushes, the way he looks down. 'Or — or me.'

'Would you have said that in 1944?'

'Yes,' Steve replies immediately, then: 'no. I don't know.' He doesn't say anything else, and when Bucky pushes himself up on his elbows, the two-way mirror is opaque. Everything is silent, except for the soft sound of Bucky's breathing, scratchy and shallow because of the cracked ribs.

He wonders, skirting the edge of hysterical amusement, if Steve was ever even there at all.

~

When they take away your choice, you take what you can.

The difference between Rebecca Barnes and the Winter Soldier is that she had a life. She was a killer before she died, she was a vicious bitch and she was the best fucking sniper since Simo Häyhä, but she had a life. She had a home and a neighbourhood and a best friend who looked at her like she hung the moon, who wanted her with an aching honesty that made Bucky turn away, because he wasn't the kind of guy she danced with.

When they take away your choice, you do what you gotta do to survive.

~

Steve makes a choice, too. If Bucky knew what it would be, maybe he could talk Steve out of it. But the thing about Steve Rogers, then and now, is that he has something to prove: to himself, to his dead mother, to his heroically dead father, to the dead man who gave him a chance and nothing more, to the girl he fell in love with, to the woman who could love him back, and to the man who used to be his best friend.

The two-way mirror stays opaque, but the door to Bucky's cell opens with a soft hiss and he's on his feet in a second. He never lets anyone drag him anywhere; that's Rebecca Barnes, and Rebecca Barnes is dead. It doesn't mean he's not afraid, he is, he's a big tough guy with a fuck-off metal arm and still sometimes it feels like anyone could push him down and undo him, like a girl without a gun on her hands and knees and begging because it doesn't matter how fierce you are, you'll beg.

But it's just Steve. Bucky lets his shoulders slump, but doesn't move away from the fighting stance.

Steve has never been inside the cell. He makes it look even smaller and more cramped than usual, like the cage they both know it really is. They keep watching each other, and Bucky doesn't know if he should be preparing himself for a beating, if he should be steeling himself for broken bones and thank for small favours because Steve won't kill him, probably.

Except finally Steve nods, like he's the one who needs to steel himself, and in two quick strides he's right there in Bucky's space, catching his face in both hands and kissing him with all the aching desperation of a drowning man grasping at razorblades. He's warm, too warm, fingers tangling in Bucky's hair and Bucky makes a soft keening noise at the back of his throat. He grabs Steve by the collar and hauls him closer, and then pushes him away.

He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Steve staggers back, eyes wide.

'What the fuck are you doing?' Bucky demands, hoarse.

Steve's expression is visibly close to crumbling, but he keeps his back straight and says, 'Something I should've done a long time ago.'

They both know that would never have happened, because a long time ago Bucky was normal and Bucky was a girl and that's not how Steve treats girls. But that's the thing, isn't it, that Bucky isn't a girl and he's no longer the girl who fucked everybody but the boy who really wanted her, who was too dumb to see what Peggy saw right away. Bucky wipes his mouth again; his heart is hammering in his chest and he doesn't know what he wants more, to punch Steve in the face or drop to his knees in front of him.

When Steve reaches out, still breathing fast, Bucky jerks away and snarls, 'Get the fuck away from me.'

Except maybe that's not true, maybe he just does it in his head. In the immediate reality he's moving towards Steve and grabbing him by the collar again, this time to shove him up against the nearest wall and bring their mouths together hard, less like a kiss and more like anger and defiance that course through his blood every second of every day and it doesn't matter if he's the Winter Soldier, if he's Rebecca Barnes; it doesn't matter, because without Steve he can't be a whole person anyway, even if Steve doesn't need him any more, not the way Bucky needs him.

And Bucky needs him like air, like breathing, like drowning in ice, like killing.

He presses himself against Steve and licks his mouth open, but when he tries to make it gentle Steve growls, low and angry, and flips them over; Bucky hits the wall and air rushes out of his lungs, and he only stops touching Steve to let him pull the worn t-shirt over Bucky's head and throw it over his shoulder. He only stops to rip Steve's shirt open because he can't be bothered with buttons. Steve slides his mouth down Bucky's jaw, bites his neck, and it goes straight to Bucky's dick. He rips Steve's belt open, too, and his fingers scramble to undo his pants one-handed, because he needs Steve's hair between his fingers and Department X taught him ambidexterity for a reason.

Finally he gives up, though, and shoves his hand down Steve's pants, making him moan. The moan turns into something pained; the metal fingers are still cold but Bucky can't stop, not now, not when in the next second he might wake up. He gets his left hand around Steve's dick and wraps his leg around Steve's thigh and doesn't stop kissing him, because he doesn't want to know what Steve might want to say, and he doesn't want to know who Steve thinks he's doing this with. He jerks Steve off too hard, too fast, but Steve doesn't complain. Instead he rocks against Bucky, right into his hand; his grip on Bucky's thigh, on his hip, is painful and bruising —

— and then Bucky is kneeling on the cold concrete floor and it's quiet — no, it isn't. He's breathing hard, and Steve is breathing hard, and Bucky is leaning over him and there is a growing pool of red.

When Bucky lifts his hands to his face they're bloody, up to the elbows, and a glass shard half-wrapped in a piece of cloth clatters to the floor.

And Bucky feels it again: Steve throwing his head back, eyes shut tight; Bucky reaching around for the shiv; glass going through skin and muscle like butter, like it's nothing; and he feels pushing the shiv up, and Steve moaning in pain or something else, the glass slicing through him up to the ribs and grinding against the bone. Bucky doesn't remember making the knife, he doesn't remember.

' _Nyet_ ,' he breathes, and presses both hands against the gaping wound on Steve's stomach. It makes Steve gasp, and he clutches Bucky's hand, but can't get enough breath in him to say anything. ' _Bozhe moi, o bozhe_ , Steve. Steve!'

The shouting attracts attention, eventually, and then everything is a blur. Five SHIELD agents in full gear tackle Bucky to the floor and wrench his arms behind his back, nearly pulling them out of the sockets; Bucky twists until he can see someone kneeling beside Steve and he shouts, 'Get a doctor, get him a _fucking doctor_!'

Steve turns his head, looks Bucky in the eye, and that makes Bucky's throat close up. He looks back at Steve, and watches his eyes drift slowly shut, watches him pass out, watches him —

Bucky closes his eyes too, and the smell of blood is overwhelming. Shaking like a leaf and not caring that five men are on him, trying to shove his face down into the concrete, he starts screaming, raw and young and terrified, until someone finally knocks him out.

~

He wakes up in a hospital bed. The light is white and painful, and Bucky can feel his system drowning in sedatives. He can barely lift a finger. His throat is parched. Every bone in his body aches, every muscle. Breathing is painful, he can feel his ribs taped tightly together, but pain is good. Pain keeps you sharp. Bucky doesn't feel sharp. He remembers dreaming about pulling the trigger on a HYDRA mook trying to sneak up on Steve; she remembers having Steve in the crosshairs, for just a split second. The memory is vague and for a moment Bucky can't remember if she's — if he's —

'Hey,' comes a scratchy murmur from the left, and Bucky somehow manages to turn his head. Steve is sitting slumped in a tiny plastic chair with his feet crossed on the edge of Bucky's bed. The outline of a bandage is visible through his thin cotton shirt, and there's crutches propped up against the wall. Bucky doesn't want to see, so he closes his eyes and starts to turn away, but Steve nudges him with one foot.

'Hey, Bucky. Don't.'

'I'm not Bucky Barnes,' he says, raspy. 'I'm not...anything.'

Steve swallows. 'I love you anyway,' he says, because of course he does, he's dumber than a brick wall. There's more conviction in it than the last time, like Steve had to give it some practice in the mirror. He nudges Bucky again. 'Move a little.'

It takes a while; Bucky's pretty banged up, and he's flying high as a kite, but finally he forces his limbs to stop playing dead and makes some space on the bed for Steve. It takes Steve a while to get on it, too. He keeps wincing in pain, and he's heavy enough to make the mattress creak. But he's warm, always warm, so Bucky ignores his ribs screaming in protest and turns on his side to face Steve.

Outside the door, he spots the barrel of a rifle. He wonders if the guard has orders to intimidate, to remind Bucky that SHIELD isn't nearly as dumb as Steve, or if the fella is just a lazy fuck who doesn't care.

'In your head,' Bucky says, 'how do you think of me?'

Steve's expression betrays nothing as he bites his lip and reaches out to wrap his fingers around Bucky's left wrist. It's not an answer. That's good. Bucky isn't sure he actually wants to know.

'If you could get out,' says Steve, eyes never straying above Bucky's mouth, 'would you kill yourself?'

Bucky presses his face into the pillow, feeling like there's broken glass inside him and someone just gave it a shake. 'I don't want to die,' he whispers. Except it's not his choice, not for a long time.

Without meaning to, he presses his fingertips to Steve's stomach, making him tense all over. He lifts the shirt out of the way and runs the backs of his knuckles over the bandage, and Steve has to catch his breath. He grabs Bucky's hand and flattens it against his stomach, and lets out a quiet, shallow gasp. A small spot of blood starts seeping through the bandage. Under it, Bucky can feel stitches and the warmth of Steve's skin, the warmth of his blood.

'They'll never let you out,' Steve says, so quiet he could be speaking to himself. Bucky just nods; yeah, he knows. It's pretty fucking clear. When he lifts his eyes to Steve's face, his jaw is set, and not from the pain. He presses their foreheads together, and Bucky realises he's talking low so that no surveillance will pick it up. 'I say fuck 'em. I'm getting you out.'

Bucky's hand spasms against Steve's stomach, but Steve just presses closer, and he's bigger, his shoulders wide enough to block out the sight of the guard at the door.

'In a couple days they'll throw you back in the cell. You gotta play along,' Steve says, then cracks a pained smile. 'Just be very, you know, sad and guilty about shanking your best friend. Give it two, three weeks. I'll take care of everything.'

'I'm gonna snap again.' Bucky bites his lip, the pounding of his blood loud in his ears. 'I'll hurt people. SHIELD's gonna hunt me down.'

'That's why I'm coming with you,' Steve whispers urgently. When Bucky opens his mouth to protest, Steve just shakes his head. 'Bucky. I'm gonna commit treason. And I'm okay with that, I don't care any more what kind of person that makes me, I can live with it. But I can't be Captain America too. And if it's a choice between you and the uniform, it's not even a choice.'

Bucky swallows, because otherwise he might throw up. Steve sees it; he smiles again, aching and resigned and desperate, and it's not reassuring at all. Slowly, he leans in to press his mouth to Bucky's, just the warm dry touch of lips. Bucky closes his eyes and imagines they're in the trenches, in Steve's tiny rented room, when they were normal and whole and okay. But Bucky was never normal and whole and okay, wasn't he? Wasn't she? That's the whole problem.

'I'm following the beautiful, trash-talking gal from Brooklyn,' Steve says, his breath ghosting over Bucky's cheek. 'I'm following you.'

~

Bucky Barnes and the Winter Soldier are one and the same, and the Winter Soldier knows war: he killed spies and traitors and cowards, men and women and children. He knows how death feels on his hands, how blood feels on his face. He knows anger.

No one ever gave Rebecca Barnes a choice. They never wanted her in the Commandos. Just a girl with a big gun, how unseemly. There was never anyone to meet her in the middle.

But Rebecca Barnes is dead, and Bucky makes a choice.

~

He wonders how much shit Steve is in by the time they're crossing the border on a stolen motorbike, with stolen passports. A lot, probably. But Steve made a choice, too, and there's no talking him out of it. Bucky never asked him about the future, and maybe that's the thing. Maybe the future — this future — was never for Steve, maybe he never wanted its wars.

Bucky cuts out the subcutaneous transmitter and GPS from under Steve's skin in a dirty motel room, and Steve does the same for him. They throw the trackers on a freight train inbound for Toronto.

It's just a matter of time before they're hunted down. The kill order most likely covers them both. São Paulo, Port Elizabeth, Casablanca, Belgrade, and Bucky wonders who they'll send after them. Barton couldn't even take Bucky alone, Banner isn't a lackey, and together they could deal with Stark. Steve doesn't have his shield, but the thing people like to forget is that he doesn't need the shield to be dangerous. They look over their shoulders and never go anywhere without weapons. Bucky wonders when they'll have to kill to survive.

He wonders if Department X would take him back, in return for protection for Steve.

He wonders if Steve would kill for him.

And he takes every moment he can, even those he can't remember afterwards when he wakes up with blood on his hands and Steve washes them clean and says, over and over like he's trying to convince both Bucky and himself, 'It's okay.'

Bucky takes it; he takes what he can.

~

Steve Rogers bleeds out on the cold concrete floor of Bucky's cell, and the final second before one of the guards puts a bullet through Bucky's brain, the final second stretches into infinity.

He bleeds out on the cold concrete floor of Bucky's cell, and the Winter Soldier's mission is complete.

He bleeds out from a bullet wound in a Kiev youth hostel, and the Winter Soldier avenges him.

He bleeds out from a knife wound in Hong Kong, and Bucky cradles him in his arms before he puts a bullet through his own brain.

~

Rebecca Barnes dies in 1944. She dies reaching out.


End file.
